


The Window Frames the Whole of It

by SonnetCXVI



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 04:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8696965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonnetCXVI/pseuds/SonnetCXVI
Summary: "Did you know that I had a child?"





	

I

After so many weeks of pressure and distress, Delphine has begun to fray. It’s not unprecedented for Cosima to find her in the abandoned living room hours after they had gone to bed, sitting still and silent in the chilly darkness. Cosima knows that Delphine needs time alone. She’s an introvert; it’s to be expected. But this sleepless brooding worries her. Despite the fact that their lives have settled into a delicate balance of work and relationship, Delphine is subtly deflating into sadness or worry or some other emotion that Cosima can’t quite put her finger on. Cosima embraces the long hours in the lab and the evenings spent discussing possible ways forward, relishes the sexual experimentation and companionship that have become the new cycle of their lives. She feels as grounded and hopeful as is possible, considering the shit storm of problems they face. But Delphine is not thriving, no matter how keenly she applies her mind to the science or her body to their experiment in passion, no matter how many times she denies that anything is wrong. Cosima doesn’t know if she is still grinding on what she considers her failures and mistakes or if there is something else distressing her. She really wishes she could figure it out.

 

II

“Did you know that I had a child?” says Delphine’s unembodied voice one night when Cosima pads sleepily into the living room to urge her back to bed. Her surprise at Delphine’s words, spilled into the darkness without preamble, is so unexpected and deep and the adrenaline shot into her gut so strong, that she feels instantly nauseated, utterly and violently awake. When she stumbles around to the front of the sofa and drops down, all she can manage is, “Why…why didn’t you tell me?” When?”

“It was a long time ago and it was not something I wanted you to know about me. No one knows,” Delphine offers, and then, although she hates any mention of what comes next, “and, as a monitor, I was … I ... I had been … conditioned … to withhold anything not written into my script.” 

Delphine is pulled up tight at the far end of the sofa with her knees to her chest and she is radiating “don’t touch me.” Cosima can feel her quivering, the kind of movement that is uncontrollable by will, like shivering or tremor. She turns toward her and pulls her feet up onto the sofa, being careful not to move into her space. 

“But you want me to know now?” she asks softly.

“Yes.” She clears her throat. “So much has changed. My feelings about Dyad … Leda … what has been done to you … my part in it. I feel now that if I ask you to love me, I should not have an … advantage … over you. If I truly love you, I must allow you to know this about me, as I have known your secrets since before we met.” 

She pauses and Cosima hears her pull a breath up into her throat and then choke it off, as though she can’t control the muscles required to release her vocal cords, express her diaphragm, shape her lips. She waits as Delphine hovers on the edge of speaking, her throat heaving. 

“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too hard,” says Cosima gently. “It’s enough that you want to. I won’t love you less if you can’t.”

“That is why I need to tell you,” whispers Delphine.

 

III

“When I was fourteen, I gave my virginity to a schoolboy. He was older, three years ahead, and he was very beautiful. He was the son of my father’s banker.

“I was inexperienced, _une naif_. Of course I had seen films and TV depictions of love and had discussed romantic things with my friends, but I had never myself dated or even kissed. I was just a foolish girl. But I loved this beautiful boy. I wanted to touch him. So in time, I slept with him. And then again, many times more in the following weeks. 

“I became a liar, Cosima. I lied all of the time, to everyone, in order to be with him. To my parents, my friends. I could think of nothing but this boy. I abandoned without hesitation everything I had been taught by the church and by my family, to get this thing that I wanted." 

She emits a self-deprecating, ironic chuff. “I was a very competent deceiver. No one suspected anything.” 

She presses her forehead briefly to her knees and then looks up, sighing. 

“I was pregnant by the beginning of summer.”

Cosima is still shot through with adrenaline and isn’t sure what to do, what to ask, how to navigate the moment. She thrumming with emotion but can’t really say what those emotions are, everything inside her surprised and tumbled as though she’s been slid sideways into a crashing car. All that she can really identify is that Delphine is struggling between the desire to tell her something and the impulse to remain closed, so she chooses a simple question that will advance the narrative, guide them to the conclusion. “Did you want to keep the baby?”

“You must understand, Cosima,” replies Delphine. “France is very Catholic and my family was very traditional, very … French. My parents were devastated and furious when I finally confessed. I had always been a good girl, obedient and excellent at my studies. And my family, my parents, we were very close. They couldn’t understand why I had done this stupid, stupid thing, this thing to shame them. 

“I was terrified. I begged and begged, but abortion was out of the question for them. They decided that I would have the baby and then give it over for adoption. I was sent to live with my grandmother in Lille. I had the baby there, in my grandmother’s house.” 

Cosima waits and when Delphine doesn’t continue, she asks gently, “What happened to the baby?”

Delphine turns her head toward Cosima, her arms still wrapped tight around her legs. 

“It was a little girl,” she says softly. “She lived only a few moments. She …” but this is choked off. She clears her throat and says instead: “The midwife could do nothing.”

“I’m so, so sorry, Delphine,” Cosima says and leans forward to touch her. 

“No!” Delphine barks and shrugs off Cosima’s hand before it even reaches her. Then more calmly, “Please. Let me finish. I need to finish this.”

Delphine turns her face away again and when she speaks, her voice is flatter. “My father had the body cremated, the ashes disposed of. The midwife was paid, quite handsomely, to register the birth under a different name. That is why my medical records contain no notation that I ever bore a child.

“Two weeks later I was sent to boarding school. I never saw the boy again.”

Even from her position at the other end of the sofa, Cosima can feel that Delphine’s trembling has intensified. Surely the worst part of the story is over. Teen pregnancy is a common tale. There is no shame in it anymore, so why is Delphine so distressed? Is she afraid of Cosima’s reaction? Is it just anxiety about having finally spoken of this? Is it shock? 

“Are you alright?” asks Cosima. 

“My child, Cosima, I don’t miss her. She was already dead when they placed her in my arms and it was a long time ago. But in that moment, when I was a child holding a child … I knew, even then … that I couldn’t do anything to change the results of my terrible choices. My daughter was born with many … deficiencies, abnormalities, you see. Her life would have been a torture, even if she could had lived. So there was no possible outcome that would have allowed me to apologize or to mitigate what I had done by creating her.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Delphine; surely you know this,” says Cosima. “Birth defects just happen sometimes. And you were only a girl. How could you have known what would happen?” 

Delphine’s voice is quivering. “This characteristic of choosing what I want and then regretting the outcome of my choices is a thread in my life, Cosima. It is a flaw. I hurt the people that I love. Even before I have loved them.” 

She looks at Cosima. “I hurt you by choices I made before I ever met you. I could hurt you again. I can’t change that.”

They sit in the darkness for long minutes not speaking, Cosima straining in her silence to provide comfort, Delphine using her silence to refuse it. She does not uncurl. 

“Do you think you could come back to bed now, let me hold you for a bit?” Cosima finally asks.

“This is not the end of the story, I’m afraid,” says Delphine.

Cosima is caught off guard for a second time and unconsciously leans back a bit.

“There is something else that I must tell you.”

 

IV

“You know that I went to boarding school. I have told you that. My parents sent me to give me the best possible education, yes, but also to hinder what they thought was… an inappropriately sexual nature.

“It was a girls’ school, in Switzerland, very exclusive. Very strict. I was given a private room with a private bath, which was unusual. My parents thought that so soon after my pregnancy, there would have been questions about my body had I shared with the other girls. It set me apart.

“I didn’t adjust well. I had been forbidden to talk about the pregnancy or the child, the boy, any of it. I didn’t … fit … with the other girls my age. How could I? 

“For the first time, I didn’t find comfort or validation in academics. Instead, they became a burden. This was particularly hard for me because, without my schoolwork, I had no distraction, nowhere to rest my thoughts, nowhere to feel adequate.

“All of the guilt, the shame, the abrupt loss of my first love, the displeasure of my parents, my inability to focus properly on my studies … loneliness. The weight of it was very great. Eventually, I couldn’t support it. 

“I slit my wrists in the bathtub of my private bath.” 

Cosima gasps, her hand involuntarily drawn to her mouth. 

“It wasn’t enough, as you can see. 

“I was sent to hospital, where I was stitched up and where my father hired a plastic surgeon to minimize the scars. He did a good job, no?” she chokes out bitterly, flipping out her wrist. 

“Delphine … ” starts Cosima, leaning forward, but Delphine interrupts with a shake of her head, barely visible in the dark.

“Please tell me what to do if I can’t touch you,” pleads Cosima. Delphine does not acknowledge this request but sniffs loudly and takes back control of her voice.

“I went back to boarding school from the hospital. A different school. I never really lived at home again, which was my own choice. 

“I grew up instead in a progression of schools, one after the other –- boarding school, university, graduate school, medical school -- until I couldn’t stay in school any longer. Somewhere, I let go of that tender little girl and everyone who had known her and I replaced her with this.” She gestures to herself, sweeping her hands from her chest towards her feet. “This is what I became: a participant in the experiment. This is what I chose for myself: the science.” 

Her voice is calm now. 

“So you see, Cosima, even though everything about me has changed, nothing has changed. I wanted the boy, so I chose a path to have him, I lied to have him. I wanted access to the science at Dyad, so I chose to overlook everything else. I am still a liar, an observer, a participant in the experiment … or I was until I met you. 

“I am not entirely who you thought I was. I am someone you didn’t really know until this moment. It would be foolish for you to love me.” 

Although Cosima doesn’t speak, it is clear that she is distressed. 

Delphine shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I just felt you should know these things, before this … before we continue. If you choose to continue.” 

When she turns her face to Cosima, her cheeks are wet.

“I know that I have lied to you many times, but I hope you can believe me when I say that I love you. About that I have always been truthful.”

Cosima swallows.

“The name on her death certificate was Marie Girard, but her real name was Aimée, Aimée Cormier.” 

It is the last thing Delphine says before she falls silent, waiting to hear the consequence of her confession, her choice.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Home Burial" by Robert Frost
> 
> "...The little graveyard where my people are,  
> So small the window frames the whole of it."


End file.
